Brad’s Note: Today, we’re sharing a story from my colleague and founder of The Opportunistic Trader, Larry Benedict.
Starting from the pits at the Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE), Larry’s skills grew until he was running a world-class $800 million hedge fund – where he regularly traded position sizes in the millions of dollars. He even went 20 years without a single losing year… putting his hedge fund in the top 1% of Barron’s rankings.
Now though, Larry fully devotes himself to bringing his trading secrets to everyday investors – with actionable, profitable options plays and other top-level strategies that made him a massive success.
While our trading strategy at Wide Moat Research is based on time in the market and not market timing, Larry’s latest strategy involves profiting from bitcoin without buying bitcoin, supercharged by the latest artificial intelligence (AI) advancements.
So if you’ve wanted to profit from bitcoin without buying it, and have money set aside for more speculative investments – read on for a great opportunity to profit from the cryptocurrency market.
By Larry Benedict, Editor, Trading With Larry Benedict
Around 2016, a gentleman came to my office to tell me, “You’ve got to buy bitcoin!” Bitcoin was trading around $1,000 at the time.
I’d been having a good year, so I had some capital to speculate with and was interested. I asked him to tell me more.
But that’s where it all went sideways.
When he started talking about putting money on an external drive and all the hoops to jump through… I passed on the chance.
I’m old-school, and I control risk closely. In fact, my careful management of risk led Jack Schwager to feature me in his book Hedge Fund Market Wizards, right after his chapter on Ray Dalio.
So all of the unusual steps sounded crazy to me.
Yet I watched its price run all the way up to more than $64,000 in 2021. That would have been more than a 6,000% return had I bought bitcoin when I had the chance.
Even at today’s lower prices, I still could have made more than 3,900%.
But I missed it. And you know what? I don’t regret it.
For every person who made millions on cryptocurrencies like bitcoin, there are stories of others who had the chance and didn’t take it.
And there are many more who took the chance and lost thousands (and maybe millions) because they didn’t understand what they were doing and didn’t understand the risks.
But despite missing out, I didn’t let that stop me from looking for ways to profit from bitcoin in a way that I could understand… and in a way that I knew would increase my chances of profiting, while allowing me to control my risk.
I used my nearly 40 years of expertise to uncover an alternative solution. And I found a trading opportunity that even has the potential to surpass bitcoin’s gains.
Let me show you an example…
A 6X Bigger Win
In 2022, bitcoin had become extremely correlated with the overall markets. And as most of us will recall, the markets were having a rough time.
From the beginning of that year to June, the S&P fell over 20%.
So given that correlation, it didn’t make sense to bet on anything but the downside in bitcoin.
But in July, that negative pressure started to weaken. And bitcoin regained some short-term momentum.
That meant it was time to put my trading strategy into action and open a position that would benefit from a recovery in bitcoin.
And in just five days, we were able to make an 87% gain.
During the same window, bitcoin itself only rose 13.5%.
So we were able to make over 6X using my strategy compared to buying bitcoin directly.
Even better, we’re able to profit using this strategy even when bitcoin isn’t going up…
On another occasion, bitcoin was struggling to stay at its highs, and we saw an opportunity to the downside in this space.
And as bitcoin fell -18.7%, we made 72.3%.
That’s part of what makes this trading method so powerful.
And by the way… this strategy doesn’t apply exclusively to bitcoin (although that’s where I’ve achieved some of our biggest gains). I’ve used my strategy to help readers profit from market trends like AI, the bond market, energy, and more.
And that’s the reason I don’t want you to miss out on these types of opportunities…
Profiting Without Buying Bitcoin
Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies aren’t for everyone.
You might look at the complexity of getting started – as well as the high volatility in this space – and struggle like I did.
That’s why this trading strategy is so powerful.
I call it “bitcoin skimming.” That’s because we’re looking for opportunities in the cryptocurrency markets – without actually having to buy crypto.
You don’t need to open an account on a special exchange, come up with a fancy password, keep track of a hard drive that stores your crypto, or even worry about a crash in bitcoin.
Bitcoin skimming is possible with just a normal brokerage account.
If you’re looking for incredible gains without having to buy bitcoin, then this is the best strategy I’ve found so far. As I showed above, it can even return higher gains than bitcoin over the same time period.
That’s why I took some time last night to show a group of traders how it works… and how they can get started using this strategy right away. It was a great time.
If you weren’t able to attend last night, I’ve made a replay available for a short time. You can find that here.
But I’d encourage you to watch right away… I’m on the cusp of issuing my next bitcoin skimming trade, and I don’t want you to miss out.
Regards,
Larry Benedict
Editor, Trading With Larry Benedict